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AUXILIARY WEAPON #1: THE ROCKET LAUNCHER!

Introducing a brand new weapon, featuring seven brand new abilities, wrapped in a brand new auxiliary wheel!

With the addition of a third weapon and eighth ability hot-bar slot, you can now augment your existing decks with the awesome might of the rocket launcher. The rocket launcher that goes 'Boom!'.

More details will be revealed very soon -- and this is just the first of many auxiliary weapons to come! We're already working on the next one…and The Secret World should prepare for a real Texas-style massacre. Rrrrrreeeennnennennnennnnn!

NEW MISSIONS!

Mission Pack #2 -- part of August's issue -- adds new investigation missions, the auxiliary weapon mission, and lair action missions to the game:

• 'Digging Deeper' continues the story that began with The Kingsmouth Code, and sends players back to Pastor Henry Hawthorne at the Kingsmouth Congregational to dig deeper into the town's secret history and Illuminati legacy
  
• In 'Death and Axes', players learn more about Sophie's close connection with the spirit world. In Transylvania's Besieged Farmlands, the dead are restless, and Sophie is increasingly sensitive to their pain -- causing Cern some concern for her well-being, and sending players on an investigation into the terrible events that have transpired here
  
• 'Strangers from a Strange Land' introduces players to the ancient history of Solomon Island, going back to when the island was visited by Norsemen in their longboats, a thousand years ago. This investigation begins with Red (of Red's Bait & Tackle) and introduces players to a pair of famous talking ravens from Norse mythology...
  
• In Transylvania, Iele -- the guardian of the Shadowy Forest -- needs the player's help in order to revive her 'Singing Stones' and fight the growing infection that threatens this delicate magical sanctuary
  
• Acquiring the first auxiliary weapon -- the rocket launcher -- won't be a cakewalk. In the first of a series of exciting auxiliary weapon missions, players will work with the Council of Venice to retrieve a highjacked shipment of rocket launchers. During the course of this mission, players face powerful new Orochi technology, travel to a brand new location, and come face to face with the two-faced Phoenicians

And these are just some of the missions that will be made available as part of Mission Pack #2!

NEW NIGHTMARE MODE DUNGEONS!

Two additional dungeons are receiving Nightmare modes in issue #2: The Facility and Hell Eternal.

Further testing the extreme limits of the players' abilities, these new additions bring new challenges and new rewards to The Secret World.

THE MODERN PROMETHEUS!

Inside an abandoned abattoir in the bowels of Brooklyn, the infamous Dr Anton Aldini (Peter Stormare) has set up his paraplastic surgery -- the Modern Prometheus -- and on August 28th, his practice will be open for business.

With the Modern Prometheus, we're introducing new heads and new facial features, allowing players to completely alter the way their characters look. The first visit is free, but subsequent nips and tucks will cost PAX. Coupons will also be made available in the item store for those players who are short on in-game cash.


OCKHAM'S RAZOR!

Unhappy with your hairstyle? With your beard or moustache? Your makeup? At Ockham's Razor in London, you can change them all!

Doubling the number of available hairstyles, players can use in-game cash (PAX) or coupons purchased in the item store to alter their 'do, facial hair or makeup.

The Secret World website

We just brought The Secret World to GamesCom 2012 to show the world some of our future plans for the game.

We showed off what our players can expect in the near future and a sneak peak of what will be released early next year. The Secret World will regularly be updated with one or more of several types of features: Such as new content, deeper game systems, new raids, more weapons, more dungeons and even complete playfields which introduce whole new chapters to the unique story.

1. DIGGING DEEPER : (see above for more info)

The upcoming second Issue of The Secret World, called Digging Deeper, will be out soon. Here players will not only get new missions to play, but also gain access to the first Auxiliary Weapon, the Rocket Launcher, after doing a mission for The Council of Venice.

This is just the first of many Auxiliary Weapons to come, so that players can develop their character any way they like and play exactly as they want to play. Since the Rocket Launcher will be the first of these weapons it will fit in with most builds and setups. Each Auxiliary Weapon comes with seven new abilities players can learn – out of which four are active and three are passive.

The Rocket Launcher offers good damage abilities for both single targets and groups of enemies. Players can also choose the Rocket Jump ability, which will propel them through the air, causing damage both at the starting area and landing spot.

We have created a whole new Ability Wheel for these Auxiliary Weapons and the players who earn one will get an extra active and passive ability slot where they can put their Auxiliary abilities. None of these weapons can be bought or traded, but must be earned by doing special missions. They can however all be upgraded to become more powerful, and when completing very difficult dungeons players can be rewarded with specific skins they can use on their Auxiliary Weapon to change its looks.

Does a Rocket Launcher from Hell tempt anyone?

Digging Deeper also includes a barber shop, Ockham’s Razor, and a plastic surgeon, The Modern Prometheus, where players can change the appearance of their characters. Here they can choose from a much wider array of looks, colors and haircuts, in effect expanding the character creator quite drastically.

2.PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER


Another question raised at GamesCom was about the coming updates to PVP, and there is definitely good news in the near future for those who enjoy this aspect of The Secret World. There will be more things to do in Fusang Projects, with more missions and challenges.

More persistence will also be introduced as the significance of holding on to captured Facilities is increased and the center Facility will become more important. This will cause battles to become more strategic and have a greater impact on the game world, because Facilities will not switch hands as often as before.

Smaller changes are also coming to Stonehenge and El Dorado, with the tweaking of systems and leveling of the playfield. The changes to PVP are coming alongside an effort to balance the numbers from each Secret Society participating in the battle.

3.RAID IN NEW YORK


But the fun does not stop there. In the next few months a whole new Raid is coming to The Secret World! Disaster has struck New York City, and the players will need to travel there in groups of ten, to investigate the threat and deal with whatever lurking horror awaits them.
The Raid keeps true to The Secret World formula of deep storytelling combined with challenging action. The players start in the New York subway system and find themselves in a makeshift camp of survivors. Shocked civilians huddle together to catch the latest news. Some are trying to escape the area, while others have broken down completely after the loss of loved ones.

The police are out of their depth, and even the tanks rolling through the streets and fighter jets flying overhead may be outmatched by the dark forces attacking Times Square and New York City. The brutality of The Secret World is about to spill over into the real world, filled with unsuspecting ordinary people, and it is up to the chosen of Gaia to set things straight.

The new Raid is not filled with boring trash monsters, but instead tells a riveting story leading up to an epic boss fight at the end. The clash will give two full teams of players a fight that will test them to the fullest, both as individuals and as a group. Superb team coordination combined with a mastery of many different abilities will be the keys to success.

Will you be joining the ones standing victorious in the heap of rubble which once used to be Times Square?

4.TOKYO


The future however holds much much more for The Secret World.

In early 2013 the first new playfield will be introduced to the game. Now players get a chance to revisit Tokyo, and see the havoc wrought to the city by the initial incident there, which they experienced in the introductory sequence of The Secret World.

Players start in the subways of Tokyo, and get to play through the flashback in reverse this time around. The incident was the catalyst for the darkness which is rising around the world, and the players can dig deep into the story to discover some of the truths beneath the veil.
After traversing the subways the players venture forth into a quarantined and filth infested part of the city. Here the unfortunate people have been affected by the corrupting filth, and driven to the same madness and mutations as seen in many other dark places across the globe.

The filth infected are not the only enemies here, but the players also get to square off against new monsters from the myths and legends of Japan as well as the technological creations of the Orochi corporation, which has its headquarters in Tokyo.

The area will be dominated by large buildings and form a huge modern urban playfield where the players can enjoy new missions and encounters – Where they can both fight new enemies and explore this devastated part of Tokyo.

The events in Tokyo constitute the ending of act one in the overall story of The Secret World and the kicking off of act two, so make sure you are ready to face the challenges awaiting you there, as more and more of the truth is revealed.

Hi all,



As most of you probably know, The Secret World team has been through a turbulent couple of weeks. We've had to let some people go, and we're in the process of reshuffling and reorganising ourselves around the remaining staff. This is never fun, but it's the way of things: we need to scale down from a full development team to a more cost-efficient live team.



So what does this mean for The Secret World? How will a smaller team affect the delivery of upcoming content? And most importantly, does TSW have a future?



That last one is an easy one: of course it does! The Secret World has a bright future ahead of it and the team remains dedicated to delivering monthly content updates.



Okay, look, we all know there are a lot of alternatives out there -- from warring guilds to kung-fu-fighting pandas -- but I can safely say that no other game offers what The Secret World offers. Freedom from classes and levels; a modern-day setting with real world locations; a critically acclaimed storyline and an atmosphere second to none; fully voiced characters that you can empathise with and believe in; a deep and unique character progression system, with boundless opportunities for experimentation and character development.



The list goes on and on. I think it's fair to say that TSW is an original and ground-breaking game, and our players agree. Our ratings remain incredibly high -- in fact, with an 8.4 Metacritic user score, we're amongst the highest rated MMOs of the past decade -- and our community is vocal, positive and growing.



And that's why we're not about to change. We're not going to play it safe. We won't be introducing classes or levels, elves or centaurs, and regardless of the competition, we won't back down from our original vision. We're going to keep doing what we're good at. We'll continue to push the boundaries, and we'll keep reinventing the wheel (quite literally). Five years ago, we set out to revolutionise the genre, and the revolution has just begun.



Fact is, this is more than bullet-points on the back of a box: The Secret World is actually unique and different, and even if our players go off to dabble in a bit of high fantasy, we'll still be here when they come back, doing what we've been doing since launch, offering a deeper and more complex experience, a game that's truly original, mature and challenging. A game for gamers.



On the development side, we have two main goals right now: To continue to service our existing players with new content, features and gameplay -- along with tweaks and fixes to existing content, of course -- and to build our player base by reaching out to new players who haven't yet had the opportunity to take the game for a spin and get hooked.



How do we plan on doing this? First off, we're going to stick with our monthly release schedule. Like we've said before, we feel it's important to give our paying customers new content and features every single month. Our second issue -- Digging Deeper -- has unfortunately been delayed by two weeks, due to the restructuring of the team, but issue #3 (title to be announced, but there are cats and it ties in with our Halloween event) will be released on time.



Secondly, we'll be polishing, fixing and streamlining the game based on feedback from our community, in order to make The Secret World even more inviting to new players. We won't mess with the core game, but we will continue to improve the experience -- visually and mechanically -- and this will certainly benefit players both new and old.



So what's ahead in upcoming issues? There's a ten-person raid in New York scheduled for October, and it's not like any raid you've ever played before. We have a bunch of auxiliary weapons on the way, and more character customisation improvements. We have a huge and exciting new feature pencilled in for Christmas, which ties into the achievement system and gives a lot more meaning to the usual 'Kill 1,000 Vampires' goals. (After all, who hasn't wondered what it would be like to have some vampiric abilities to play around with?) We're creating intermediary decks with brand new clothing rewards; we have a ton of new missions and storylines in development; and we have a huge new adventure zone scheduled for next spring, bringing players back to Tokyo's Ground Zero, to face brand new threats, meet new characters, play new missions and explore an intriguing urban environment unlike anything you've ever seen in an MMO.



And that's only some of the cool content we have in the pipeline. The Secret World is far from done: in fact, we're just getting started. (Actually, we're pretty far along, but you know what I mean.)



This game will continue to grow and evolve in the months and years ahead, and I hope to see you all along for the ride!



Ragnar



P.S. Oh, and please tell your friends and family about our trial! All you have to do is go to our official website and register to enjoy three whole days of The Secret World, free of charge.

With the tool you can find other players from any Dimension who want to group up for any playfield or dungeon in the game. When you unlock the harder difficulties, Elite and Nightmare, these will also become available as options in the Group Finder tool.

• You find the tool in your Menu or by clicking Shift + C. Here you can either browse and look for other people who want to do the same thing as yourself, or you can sign up and show yourself as available for the content you want to play.
  
• When signing up you choose the playfield or dungeon you would like to play in, which difficulty you would like and which role you can fill in the group.
  
• You can choose between tank, healer or damage dealer, but because of the classless system of The Secret World many of you will be able to fill more than one role, so you can of course choose any combination of the three, or even all of them if you like.

When you find likeminded players in the Group Finder tool you can easily send them messages or invite them directly into your group.

So look forward to Digging Deeper. Finding groups will never be the same

Our newest Issue of The Secret World is here, and it not only offers new content but also our first seasonal event!
The event and the Cat God himself will make their appearance in October as we are getting closer to Halloween, so look forward to a phone call from an old acquaintance to set you off.

In the mean time here is a sneak peek at him on the cover for Issue #3:


The Halloween event will run through the end of October and into the first week of November, so there'll be plenty of opportunities to take on the challenge and learn what's behind this new, dark threat to The Secret World.

Halloween will offer several missions which set off a brand new storyline and a brand new villain, both of which we'll get back to further down the road.

In addition to fresh content, such as new locations and monsters, our Halloween event also brings with it tricks, treats, cool new costumes and special pets.

But, of course, that's not all we're bringing to you with Issue #3. There are also several new missions available right now:

'The Binding', which brings you to the City of the Sun God in Egypt to learn more about the Seven Sentinels. This truly epic investigation mission is definitely one of the most challenging and extensive in The Secret World and will offer even the most hardened puzzle solvers a run for their money.

The werewolf Traian gets a brand new action mission in the Carpathian Fangs. 'Dogs of War' plays on the mounting conflict between the vampires and their allies. Use your wits and battle prowess to instigate a war between the werewolves and the vampires, and exploit the ensuing chaos to defeat enemy commanders.

We are continuing our updating of Lairs in this Issue. We are adding a full set of Lair missions; to let the process of gathering up the last few pieces you need to finalize those patterns go even smoother. Besides there will be several more updates to Lairs in the near future.

In the coming weeks you should also look forward new outfits available in the in-game store and a completely new awesome pet with a jet pack on its back!


Full Issue#3 notes : here

Hey guys, Tanya Short here, Senior Designer. Before launch, I was in charge of the Dreaming Prison segments of the story mission, the hub cities and faction ranks. Nice to meet you!

(MINOR SPOILER WARNING – this blog post might contain too much secret-divulging for the faint of heart. I’ll stay away from major spoilers, though.)

I’m leading the charge on the Halloween content which is to be activated around October 15th-ish, and wanted to share with you a bit about what we’re up to and how we work.

We wanted to make Halloween a refreshing break from the ‘main plot’, with a bit of a lighter tone. Compared to the more apocalyptic main game, Halloween should be more like “an episode of Buffy”… but also we should be ambitious, since unlike more fluffy fantasy games, Halloween is our dead-ringer holiday. As Ragnar put it once, “it’s our Christmas!” So we aimed high.

Kasper Hartman (one of our fantastic writers) and I actually started pitching Halloween content storylines back in May, and we went back and forth on a few different ideas with the team. A cursed academic whose research went a little too close to an Ancient Truth? Mysterious radio signals? Celtic rituals? “Samhain” does NOT rhyme with “Ham-Rain”, by the way.

We knew we wanted it to start in Kingsmouth, since it’s our own personal Halloweentown… but we didn’t want to hurt the feelings of those poor survivors either. Asking someone for candy handouts when they’ve just watched their families get eaten by zombies… not so sensitive. We also knew that we had a couple of interesting cat characters seeded in the background of The Secret World, which would be fun to flesh out, especially since our more savvy players would get all the references.

We kept coming back to this idea of the King of Cats, a minor mythological being in ancient Ireland called “Irusan” who’s mostly known for eating a poet that got too snarky. Somewhere between a spirit and a god, Irusan had the right attitude to be a complex adversary. After a few pitches were batted around, we decided we’d focus on what we liked about him—that all the cats of the world could be related somehow, and might be used for a greater purpose. Perhaps a greater… EVIL purpose? Dun dun dunnnn.

Part of the appeal of live content, for me, is developing a character or location that was underused, or under-explored. Seriously, for every 1 cool place or person you’ve seen in the game, there’s 3 more just waiting in the wings to come out and impress you. As a designer, this is awesome. It’s immensely satisfying to me to take something that, in its creators mind was this big complex thing, and help it become what it was always supposed to be. I know, I know, fictional characters don’t have a ‘destiny’ per se, but it still feels good! Closure!

So, this year, we start with Madame Rogêt and her friend Deputy Andy, who each get a bit of depth added, but my favorite part is getting to explore a bit more about Stonehenge and its role as a ley line in the world’s power. Stonehenge is a unique symbol of timeless power and ancient magic, and it’s already a familiar place in The Secret World, but it’s normally limited only to a PvP arena, so it was perfect to get a new Samhainy PvE twist. I’ll stop so I don’t spoil it too much.

At the moment we’re actually doing the nuts and bolts of the implementation—making sure the cauldron’s bubbling, making sure the zombies have all reported in, making sure the pieces all fit together so it all works properly. We’ve gotten the voice recordings we need and the cinematics guys are hard at work. I’ve also gotten to know the main villain a bit better, and seen what tricks he has up his sleeve.

So all I need to do now is make sure it works with the boss fight set up by the dungeon team scripter I’ve borrowed (your favorite Hell Raised/Hell Eternal Guy, Steven Lumpkin), and a few other “sightings”. Am I revealing too much? This not-spoiling thing is really hard.

The MOST fun thing is definitely the frills. The mission mechanics and functionality is the ‘most important’, but what really gets me excited is thinking up a cool new reward and using you guys in the forums for inspiration and ideas.

Thinking “Wouldn’t it be fun to look like a vampire for awhile?” on Monday and making it happen on Tuesday makes this the best job in the world. Or “If I had a pet cat with tentacles, shouldn’t it sometimes teleport to another dimension?” or “What would a Crowley’s Crunchies candy taste like?” … really, I could keep putting in frills forever, but Halloween’s coming up fast. And then the winter solstice isn’t far after that!

Even though you won’t be seeing Irusan just yet, he needs to be ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice, so I have to get back in there and squish a few bugs. I’m on Twitter as tanyaxshort, if you’re looking to shoot me a few questions. Hope I can talk to you again soon!